vendredi 30 septembre 2016

What is Candid?

Candid is a way for you to voice your opinion about specific topics, without having your ideas linked to your personal information. Social media is a great way to share and view content from your friends. It’s not always to best place to brag about your new orca-skin coat. When you share stuff like this, you may find friends start to judge you or even get really mad at you. Sometimes you get into it with total strangers who decide to screenshot your posts and send it to your employer! That’s why it’s sometimes better to express certain views anonymously. It’s your ideas that matter, not always the person behind them.

The solution is an app called Candid. This app lets you anonymously share your opinion on all kinds of different topics. You’ll find groups of people talking about politics, movies, social issues and even groups based on the town that you live in. Want to let people know that the local pumpkin eating contest is rigged? This is the place to do it. Do people even eat pumpkins? Like can you just take a bite like it’s a apple? Hmmm… I’ll ask about it on Candid.

Candid users always remain anonymous. Feel free to get into arguments, post controversial opinions or express your love for a fictional anime character. While browsing the app, I found several interesting and hilarious conversations. Here are some of the best topics but often times the comments are way more interesting.

Giveaway

While you’re trying out this amazing app, you have the opportunity to win a new Google Pixel phone. All countries can participate. All you have to do to enter for a chance to win is:

Download Candid

Search for the XDA group

Join the XDA-Developers.com group

Make a post in the group with your twitter handle

The Official XDA Group on Candid

And that’s it! We will randomly choose a winner from the users that posted. Good luck!

Download Candid

Candid is available for iOS and Android devices. Setup takes only seconds and then you’re on your way to browsing all sorts of topics from other users.

Cross-platform development has presented a major challenge for most independent developers for many years. Quite often, it’s simply too much of an time and resource investment to learn a new programming language in order to port your app over to another platform.

For years, this fact of resource allocation is what has pushed many developers to primarily focus their efforts on iOS, due to the more lucrative market. Thanks to projects such as Xamarin, however, developers who are familiar with C# have been able to push their projects across iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile. But Android developers are most familiar with writing in Java, so using Xamarin would require a developer to familiarize themselves with a new language and build platform. We’ve covered one project aimed at bridging the gap between mobile operating systems by providing a cross-development platform for Java developers – Intel’s Multi-OS Engine – but there’s no telling where that project is headed. That’s where MechDome comes in.

MechDome is a start-up company based in California and incorporated in January that has developed a conversion tool to automatically create native iOS and OS X apps from your Android app. No need to learn how to use a new IDE or API. All you need to do is send an APK file to MechDome (no need to send them your source code), and the fully automated tool will compile a standalone binary in seconds for iOS and OS X that the developer can then distribute on Apple’s App Store. We sat down in an interview with MechDome’s founder and CEO, Mario Kosmiskas, to see a demonstration of the tool in action – and it works. Although there are some limitations due to fundamental differences between how iOS and Android operate (which we’ll discuss below), the tool has already produced a few live apps on the Apple App Store such as the open-source Reddit client RedReader and an open-sourceSudoku client to prove it works.

Android Apps on iOS with MechDome

The stated goal of MechDome is to allow developers to convert an unmodified Android app into a native iOS or OS X app. Compared to technologies such as Intel’s Multi-OS Engine or Xamarin, an Android developer does not need to know how to bind an Objective-C library because the tool will handle that for you. Nor is there any need to use a UI builder to modify your Android app, as MechDome handles converting all Android UI elements. Yes, even Android tablet apps translate nicely into a format suitable for iPads.

MechDome’s biggest promise is that the converted Android app will function in a manner that users of the target OS will be familiar with. For instance, the Android share menu will be replaced with the native share sheet in iOS, and will include the ability to use AirDrop if applicable. Apps that post notifications in Android will instead display a notification in iOS’s Notification Center. Certain intents such as opening a camera on Android will indeed open the camera on the iOS device, and URL intents on Android will call Safari on iOS. Content providers on Android that access contacts or the calendar will instead access the relevant iOS or OS X databases for this information.

In general though, all hardware functionality required for the use of an Android app will be mapped directly to use the relevant hardware in iOS. Software functions, though, can be split into 3 distinct categories: 1) functionality that doesn’t exist on iOS (such as the toast message) will be implemented directly, 2) functionality that exists on both iOS and Android are replaced with the relevant iOS method, and 3) functionality that exists on iOS but not on Android (such as Apple’s 3D Touch library) cannot be converted but can be implemented through the use of a library. Most activities, views, services, toasts, and basic content providers should be convertible from Android to iOS, according to MechDome’s founder.

But as mentioned previously, there are indeed some limitations to this tool that are imposed by the nature of how iOS works. One of the biggest challenges facing an Android developer looking to convert his or her app to iOS is how to handle a background service. iOS is much more stringent with when and what kinds of background services that third-party applications can run, for better or worse. Furthermore, the rich intent system present in Android that allows for inter-app communication is largely absent on iOS. Finally, the Google Play Services API is currently not supported, so any app relying on Google services will not function. Thus, developers will be mostly limited to functionality that is accessed directly by manual user input, which should not pose a significant problem for most games or apps.

MechDome In Use

In a private demo, the tool does indeed seem to function as advertised. Mr. Kosmiskas demonstrated compiling several fully functional Android apps into working iOS and OSX apps. Toast notifications, notifications in the Notification Center, webview, location access, text input, and general functionality of UI elements all worked in demo. The AOSP calculator running on iOS looked and functioned exactly as it does on any Android device.

Updating an application and re-compiling it for iOS was also shown, and the process fairly simple. The developer, in this case Mr. Kosmiskas, demonstrated changing a text box to display “XDA-Developers” in Android Studio. He then exported the app, generated a signed APK, and compiled the iOS and OS X binaries in seconds from the MechDome server. When the iOS app was started using an emulator, the changes made in Android Studio were present.

Currently, MechDome is undergoing a free public beta program. Developers can register their app on the MechDome website to receive an invite to test converting their Android app. No pricing information has yet been unveiled for the service, unfortunately. Still, it’s an interesting project to stay on the lookout for if you’re an Android developer looking to eventually make waves in Apple’s ecosystem without having to expend much effort of your own.

It’s fair to say the Pixel and Pixel XL have not been shy over the last couple of months. We’re looking forward to seeing these two devices officially announced next week, but rumor has it that smartphones won’t be the only thing Google unveils on October 4th. If true, we could see Google announcing hardware products like the Chromecast dongle that can support Ultra HD video, the Daydream View VR headset, and Google Home.

You can think of Google Home as their way to compete with the Amazon Echo. A standalone device that allows you to access your entertainment (like playing songs and playlists), manage your everyday tasks (like setting reminders, making reservations, controlling your lights and thermostat), and having access to Google search all with just your voice. It was originally thought that Google would be the sole manufacturer of this device, but a new report says otherwise.

Variety is reporting that Google is wanting other OEMs to integrate Google Home into their own products. At first it seemed like this meant something similar to how they did their OnHub router where multiple manufacturers could make their own, but it could go beyond that. At a closed door meeting with Google, it’s said that Google wants other OEMs to utilize Google Home like they have been with Google Cast. The report also says that Google might be displaying “aggressive muscle-flexing” in its negotiation by telling manufacturers that they’d have to incorporate the service if they want their products to be able to use Chromecast at all.

Either way, we could see a number of products like smart TVs, soundbars, Bluetooth speakers, and more have Google Home baked right into the product and as early as next summer.

Qualcomm’s financial standing seemed to have started going slightly down hill when Samsung opted for their own Exynos chipset over the traditional Snapdragon variant in select markets last year. The company had to revise their sales targets for the entire year because of this and while they did beat analyst expectations in Q3 of 2015, revenues were still down $7.1 billion during the same quarter the year before.

The company saw profits increase during Q1 of this year, but overall revenue was still down 19% YoY due to a fall in shipments. Qualcomm losing some of its modem business to Intel puts pressure on them too. So we can see Qualcomm hasn’t had the best track record lately (more specifically, last year), but a new report suggests they can even this out with a possible acquisition. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Qualcomm is looking to acquire NXP Semiconductor for upwards of $30 billion.

Less than a year ago, NXP had acquired Freescale Semiconductor for a cool $12 billion that made the company the “the world’s top maker of automotive electronics.” See, while NXP does offer some ARM SoCs, they are focused more on the low-power components for integrated devices. The company sells a number of automobile products like temperature sensors and power management controllers.

During the first two quarters of this year, NPX saw over a 50% increase in revenue growth compared to the same quarter a year before. So while we could see some overlap here with NXP’s SoC business, this acquisition could be more about expanding away from smartphones and diving into other markets. This type of diversity would allow Qualcomm to still thrive if they happen to have another slip up like they did with the Snapdragon 810, and at the very least it allows Qualcomm to expand without as much risk by acquiring a repertoire of established designs.

LeEco, formerly known as LeTV, is a massive Chinese conglomerate that has their hand in all sorts of industries. The company deals with music, sports, smart TVs, cloud computing, driverless cars, and has made a big splash in China and India with their smartphone business. Much like Xiaomi, LeEco’s smartphones are priced very competitively and with impressive build quality for the price you pay.

At the time they announced their fall surprise for the United States, LeEco had already hired 400 employees. The company says they they are on track to grow this number to 1,000 before the end of the year so it seems obvious they are planning for something big in the states. Now, LeEco has started to send out press invites to various technology publications for an upcoming event that will take place in San Francisco on October 19th.

They have yet to confirm exactly what this event will be about, but many are speculating it will be the first time their products will officially be sold in the country, and some reports claim they might be bringing their services too. But again, LeEco is involved in a number of industries so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what they’re planning. We would like to think they will announce plans to sell their smartphones in the US (and we believe it makes the most sense, given other similarly competitive companies are doing the same lately), but this could be about smart TVs, smart bikes, etcetera. We’ll just have to wait a few weeks and see how things turn out.

A fun project to try inside of an Android app is to recreate the Matrix-like effect. XDA Recognized Developer sylsau has posted a tutorial detailing how you can achieve this Digital Rain effect inside a demo app.

jeudi 29 septembre 2016

Digging around in AOSP is a great way to make new discoveries about Android, and this time we’ve come across something rather hilarious. For some time, users have reported that the technology website TheVerge.com provided slow performance on mobile devices.

Now to their credit, their website performance has improved over time in my experience. Plus, it’s not as if other sites (including our own) don’t have issues we can strive to work on, but nevertheless I found it quite amusing that in its official set of workload benchmarks, Google decided to use The Verge in their testing.

Android Workload Automation

Workload Automation (WA) is a framework developed by ARM for collecting performance data on Android devices by executing a suite of many repeatable workloads. Google benchmarks performance on their devices by doing many of these workload tests and collecting a summary of power usage, which they then import into a spreadsheet to see how their optimizations have improved performance over time. The company picks and chooses which apps to include in its test suite, but in general they limit themselves to most of the popular Google apps. That’s the gist of how it works, but we’ll show the evidence from source code and describe the test suites in more detail so you can get a better picture of what automated tests Google does to measure performance.

Within AOSP, there is a directory dedicated to the workload automation tests. The apps that are used for testing are defined in defs.sh, and generally fall under one of two categories: default, pre-installed Google App or third-party web browser. One benchmark app stands out from the rest, and it’s com.BrueComputing.SunTemple/com.epicgames.ue4.GameActivity which I assume refers to the BrueBench ST Reviewer benchmark which is based on the Unreal Engine 4.

The Chrome app in particular is launched with a flag to load The Verge:

As for why the test seems to differ for the volantis (Nexus 9), I’m not exactly sure. Anyways, as for what tests this Chrome-activity-with-The-Verge actually goes through, we can determine by looking at the source code of the workload automation tests.

Test Suites

First up, there’s the systemapps.sh test, which Google states works as such:

# Script to start a set of apps in order and then in each iteration
# switch the focus to each one. For each iteration, the time to start
# the app is reported as measured using atrace events and via am ThisTime.
# The output also reports if applications are restarted (eg, killed by
# LMK since previous iteration) or if there were any direct reclaim
# events.

# Script to start a set of apps, switch to recents and fling it back and forth.
# For each iteration, Total frames and janky frames are reported.

And then there’s chromefling.sh, which tests Chrome’s performance rather simply:

# Script to start 3 chrome tabs, fling each of them, repeat
# For each iteration, Total frames and janky frames are reported.

Another amusing test in the Workload Automation suite, although unrelated to The Verge, is the youtube.sh performance test which measures UI jank

#
# Script to play a john oliver youtube video N times.
# For each iteration, Total frames and janky frames are reported.
#
# Options are described below.
#
iterations=10
app=youtube
searchText="last week tonight with john oliver: online harassment"
vidMinutes=15

Finally, each of these tests are used to measure real world power usage by cycling through them for a certain amount of time, as defined in pwrtest.sh:

# Script to gather perf and perf/watt data for several workloads
#
# Setup:
#
# - device connected to monsoon with USB passthrough enabled
# - network enabled (baseline will be measured and subtracted
# from results) (network needed for chrome, youtube tests)
# - the device is rebooted after each test (can be inhibited
# with "-r 0")
#
# Default behavior is to run each of the known workloads for
# 30 minutes gathering both performance and power data.

Google can then collect these data using pwrsummary.sh and import them into a spreadsheet:

These are all fairly common real-world UI performance tests, not unlike the kinds you would see in our own testing. It appears that the change to load The Verge’s homepage when opening Chrome was rather recent, as before last year Google would only open a new tab in Chrome during these tests. A change made in May 28th, 2015 introduced the use of The Verge when testing Chrome, however. As amusing as it is that Google is using The Verge of all places when performing Workload Automation testing, keep in mind that this doesn’t mean The Verge is the worst offender out there for web performance.

Far from it, in fact, as many other webpages suffer from mediocre performance thanks to the proliferation of more and more ads to compensate for the rise of ad-blockers. Indeed, it’s most likely that the decision to use The Verge was simply one out of convenience, given how tech savvy the average Googler is and the inside joke among many enthusiasts regarding The Verge’s webpage performance.

There are both good and bad news for Android Wear owners today — well, the good news are mostly reserved for a few lucky watch owners. But in short, a new Android Wear 2.0 Preview is available for download and flashing.

The new Developer Preview 3 brings some rather big additions, including the additions of a Google Play Store on Android Wear. This allows you to easily find and install apps directly on the watch, which synergies perfectly with the watch-only app capabilities of Android Wear 2.0 You can browse recommended apps in the home view, search for apps, and then install them on your watch, as well as update applications. This makes app management easier, and you can install the watch-app portion of a service so you don’t need both the phone app and watch app, as the former are no longer necessary. Developers can now build and publish watch-only applications!

An on-watch store might sound clunky, but Google surveyed developers and ran studies that concluded users repeatedly looked for a way to discover new applications right from the watch. Developers can publish their apps on the Play Store for Android Wear by following these steps, making sure the Wear 2.0 apps set minSdkVersion to 24 or higher, use the runtime permissions model, and are uploaded via multi-APK using the Play Developer Console.

There are also a few new, useful features and optimizations, with a prominent one being improvements to complications for developers, a new UI component for developers to optimize vertical lists for round displays, and Smart Reply. That’s right, Android Wear now generates Smart Reply responses for MessagingStyle notifications. These are generated by an on-watch machine learning model based on the context of the notification (no data is uploaded to the cloud to generate responses). Sadly, said notification style with images posted by standalone apps don’t show images in the notification (bug), and there is no support for notification groups.

You’ll need to flash the system image onto your watch and download the beta version of the Android Wear app on your device. Developers can also use the emulator to test their applications if they don’t have a watch to test on. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this preview, because the real deal is not coming for a while: Google now says that they’ve decided to continue the preview program into early 2017, and that the first watches will receive Android Wear 2.0 around that date. This means that the Android Wear 2.0 update won’t come until next year for most of us, at the earliest. This also likely means we won’t see Pixel watches this year.

Google has not mentioned any official reason for this delay in the release timeline, except the receipt of feedback from the developer community. And the delay of Android Wear 2.0 likely isn’t good news for smartwatch OEMs either, as they would now have to settle with either the existing stable release, or question the future of the platform entirely. There are no new successors to existing smartwatches coming in from the big names, and even Huawei is in talks to jump ship to Tizen. Existing stakeholders who have invested in new smartwatches this year, like ASUS with its ZenWatch 3, are also not likely to be happy with how the timeline has taken a turn for the worse. All in all, considering the current position of Android Wear in the market in light of its competition, the delay in release must have been a very strong decision to take, just before the upcoming holiday season.

What are your thoughts on the delay in Android Wear 2.0 release? Also, how was your experience with the Dev Previews of Android Wear 2.0 so far? Let us know in the comments below!

Google Apps on Android are a love-hate affair. Average consumers find the pre-loaded set of Google Apps to fit within their requirements enough to not worry about alternatives. But on the other hand, the apps themselves are not the best examples of how to create guidelines, or how to make apps either.

The previous statement becomes clearer when you expand your scope to look at Google Apps on other ecosystems, like iOS or on desktop platforms like Chrome OS. Apps made by Google themselves on these platforms feature a different design, and often offer functionality that the Android app gets days, weeks and months later (looking at you, Hangouts). Some Android apps, like Youtube, are missing useful features present on desktop. So we ask you,

What Features do Google Apps on Android sorely lack, when compared to the same set of Google Apps on other platforms? Which was the most frustrating discrepancy you noticed when you switched from using Google Apps on Android to other platforms?

Samsung is satisfied with the progress they’ve made in the mobile VR space thanks to the Gear VR for the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series. However, they do realize that the display technology isn’t quite there yet and this is why they’ve been holding back on releasing a standalone VR headset. The company also says VR is at the peak of its hype phase, and they want to wait and see if the market matures.

In case you don’t remember, Samsung confirmed they were working on a standalone VR headset back in April of this year. As with most products that big companies work on, not all of them will see the light of day. A lot of them are worked on to help progress the technology to a level where consumers will he happy with it. This is what we’re currently seeing at Samsung with a VR headset that doesn’t require a smartphone.

Samsung believes display technology needs to advance to at least twice the pixel density that we have in smartphones today. So it looks like the company is waiting and seeing how the experience of a standalone VR headset will be with Ultra HD display panels. Samsung’s President & Chief Strategy Officer, Young Sohn, says this could be an incentive for the company to advance the technology faster, but it would cost them at least $5 to $10 billion to do so and develop a 10K mobile display.

As as we mentioned earlier, they just don’t know if the VR market is worth that type of investment right now. They are willing to do so if the customers prove they are willing to buy into this technology, but they are worried the market will stagnate after the hype dies down. Sohn says it’s “a bit of a chicken and egg problem right now,” and would rather just wait and see how the market evolves before taking a big leap like that.

A while back Miles did an in-depth review of the FreedomOS ROM on the OnePlus 3. If you didn’t see that video, you can check it out here. In this video, we will follow up with this ROM and see how it has progressed so far.

One of the biggest differences if that everything is starting to look much more like HydrogenOS. Things like the power menu and the notification center have all been modified for a more Hydrogren type look.

A new feature that has been added to this ROM is the ability to choose between the Layers and the Substratum theme engines. Substratum is fairly new, but it’s really special so check it out!

The advanced settings menu has been ported in from HydrogenOS. This menu lets you schedule power on/off, toggle user enjoy plan, and customize how you clear your apps.

Another change is the ability to access the system theme settings through the display menu. Choose between light, dark or default themes.

That’s about it for changes in the FreedomOS ROM. If you want to get this ROM for yourself, check out this thread here.

The Moto Z is just starting to get in the hands of customers and we’re already seeing community developers releasing mods for the device. This build of TWRP for the Moto Z is being maintained by kaneawk, and it is for the device with the codename Griffin (not Sheridan).

There aren’t any special instructions required to get this installed onto your device. The typical method of booting to bootloader via ADB and then executing the fastboot flash recovery command seems to work just fine. As noted on the TWRP install page, you’ll want to reboot back into recovery mode after you flash TWRP so that it doesn’t get replaced by the stock Android recovery. TWRP can then patch the stock ROM and prevent it from overwriting it with the stock recovery.

We’ve had a few people within the XDA community report the custom recovery installs just fine on the Moto Z. As of right now though, they did run into issues with trying to flash various mods on the device with TWRP. So if you plan on trying to root with SuperSU, or install things like Xposed Framework or Magisk, then please be sure to create a full Nandroid backup ahead of time. In any case, you’ll likely be sailing smoothly.

As with any device that has just become available, it can take time before the kinks get ironed out. Just be sure you have a fresh Nandroid backup and you should be safe to experiment with various mods. As always though, these things can void your warranty so understand that you’re taking a risk on your own accord. Community developers and XDA are not responsible for anything you do with your Moto Z.

You might recall that a part of our partnership with Honor incorporates a reward system for the XDA users that are most active in Honor forums (that includes the Honor 8, Honor 5X, Honor 7, Honor 6/6X, Honor 5C, Honor 4X, Honor 4C, and Honor 3C). We have a special script running that looks at everyone that participates in any Honor forums and assigns points, each day, based on post and thread quality, plus other factors. Then, we apply a ranking to those with the top points, and give out prizes. Below is a list of those that won prizes in this latest round. But there’s another one coming: on October 17 we will be choosing the next round of people that have earned a reward from Honor, and we have more prizes to give including an Honor 8, two Honor 5X’s, two Honor Band Z1’s, two Engine Earphones, five Honor Selfie Sticks, plus fifteen invitations to an upcoming software beta test. So if you didn’t win a prize, be sure you’re active in the Honor sections (again, with useful, helpful posts). Or, if you won something already, you can win more prizes, and higher tiers of prizes, with continued quality participation in the Honor sections.

OnePlus X Update

Shortly after the AMA ended, OnePlus announced that stable builds of Android 6.0 Marshmallow in the form of OxygenOS 3.1.2 have begun incrementally rolling out to the OnePlus X. This stable build is a result of feedback incorporated after the community beta builds of Android 6.0 for the device, and the OTA can be received by all users on OxygenOS 2.2.3, 3.1.0 and 3.1.1 without needing to flash back to previous versions.

Of course, Android 6.0 Marshmallow is not the only upgrade or addition this update brings. Some more highlights of this update include:

Launcher upgrades

New icon packs

Google search bar UI customization

New design of wallpaper picker

Shelf UX improvements

Long press boards to rearrange or remove

General system performance improvement

Settings changes

New (native Android) app permissions

New Alert Slider settings with more customization options

New apps

OnePlus Music Player

OnePlus Gallery

Implemented October Android security patches

General bug fixes

While it took an awfully long time for Marshmallow to finally land on the device in a stable format, it is good to see that the October Android security patch has already incorporated within this update. The OnePlus X is unlikely to receive Android 7.0 Nougat thanks to Qualcomm dropping support for the MSM8974 on 7.0, so we hope OnePlus does keep incorporating more features and security updates as OxygenOS updates for this device.

OnePlus 3 Update

The OnePlus 3 also gets another update, but before readers get their hopes up, this is not Nougat. This update is for another Marshmallow-based community beta for the device, with OxygenOS version 3.5.3, incorporating several improvements and optimizations. Some notable changes are:

Users on previous community build will receive the build via OTA. Users on stable builds would need to flash the update via ADB sideload. OnePlus does warn that there may be compatibility issues with TWRP, so it is advisable to back up important data beforehand. Another point to note, migration from community builds to stable builds require wiping data and cache, in case you want to go back to a stable release due to the beta nature of these updates. The announcement post also mentions that this build is part of a limited program, and once they have enough feedback from users, they can disable the download links.

Earlier, we reported on Google announcing YouTube Go for the data-conscious Indian consumer. Now, Google has brought something for the data-happy customer in India: Google Play Music.

The Google Play Music service has finally been launched in India, although there has been no official announcement blog post to this effect. But since the service is now live, users can purchase songs and albums from the Play Music app in India. Users can also upload their existing library onto Play Music. However, the Google Play Music All Access service is not available for purchase yet, and since there has been no official announcement yet, there is no word on whether this streaming service will come to the market soon.

Pricing on Google Play Music does seem expensive keeping in mind the average purchasing power of a smartphone user (encompassing the high and low ends of the market), as well as the local competition in the digital library space. For example, Google Play Music is charging a flat ₹15 ($0.23) per song, with albums ranging from ₹75 to ₹190 ($1.13-$2.86). On the other hand, Airtel’s Wynk Music lets you purchase individual songs at ₹10 ($0.15), while Apple Music charges either ₹7 or ₹15 ($0.11-$0.23) per song. There’s a lot more competition in the streaming arena, with local players like Saavn and Gaana already having a foothold, and even Amazon planning to dip its toes.

India is on the verge of a data revolution, with smartphone users witnessing high speed internet at cheap rates for perhaps the first time after the entry of Reliance Jio in the market. Jio is currently offering free 4G LTE usage (FUP capped at 4GB per day) upto 31st December 2016, and at very competitive prices beyond that period. With consumers responding extremely enthusiastically — heck, I haven’t been able to land a SIM yet since all stores are sold out — it is no surprise that everyone wants to hitch a ride on this data bandwagon. The next couple of months have scope to transform India into a priority market for digital goods and media.

For now, Google Play Music has its work cutout. How Google plays the service, app and its Android ecosystem into its advantage, remains to be seen.

What are your thoughts on Google Play Music launching in India? Let us know in the comments below!

mercredi 28 septembre 2016

Samsung has been dealing with their Galaxy Note 7 replacement program for close to a month now. At first, things were slow to start as the company didn’t have new, safe units for customers to swap out. So those who participated in the replacement program early were forced to get a refund or switch to another Samsung phone like the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge. This actually caused a number of people to ignore the replacement program for the first couple of weeks.

A week ago, Samsung confirmed that 500,000 replacement units of the Galaxy Note 7 had arrived in the United States and other shipments were on the way to other countries around the world. Since replacement units have become available Samsung says 90% of those who have returned their Galaxy Note 7 have opted to get one of these newer units. Samsung says they are humbled by the loyalty their customers have with the product and with the company.

They have also announced that more than 60% of defective Galaxy Note 7 units have been replaced in both the United States as well as South Korea. The company also notes that over 80% of their Galaxy Note 7 customers in Singapore have participated in the exchange program. Samsung does note that “there have been only a small number of reported incidents,” even though it has likely been higher than expected.

Samsung doesn’t want to see anyone else get hurt from their products and they need to do a lot of work to repair the reputation they and the Galaxy Note 7 has received lately. Although sadly, these issues might continue to surface as we’ve seen replaced Galaxy Note 7 devices continue to have issues with the battery and one reportedly caught on fire in China just this week. Samsung hasn’t released an official statement regarding these new units having issues, but we expect the company to confirm or deny the reported cases in the near future.

Yesterday, the OnePlus team took to Reddit’s Android subreddit to field questions and provide answers. This AMA (Ask Me Anything) session was attended by Brian (Head of ROM Product), Aaron (Android Technical Lead), Omega (ROM Dev Lead), Bradon (Community/Marketing) and Carl (Head of Global). The AMA was intended to be software focused, but the team answered a fair few general questions as well.

Here is a compilation of everything we’ve learned from the Reddit AMA:

General Questions and Future Plans

bad-_-horse: Has your focus shifted from providing good phones on a budget or will you still aim to have good and cheap phones? Will you release multiple tiers of phones at once?

Bradon: We’ve never made a “cheap” phone, and pricing has never been a main focus for us. We start by creating the best products we can and go from there. That said, we are pretty proud of our streamlined operations which allow us to be competitive in terms of pricing.

nikigx2: /u/Carpe02 are there any plans on releasing OnePlus smartwatch?

Carl: Nope

quicksilver101: Any reason on why OnePlus does not incorporate FM Radio functionality into the devices? The OnePlus 3 is missing FM Radio, and FM still continues to be a favorite feature for those who are not looking at locally storing music nor relying only on data-driven streaming (in India at least).

Carl: Our users in India are very different from average users in India. Clearly over indexing on income, education and similarity to our users in US and Europe.

pankajparikh: Can we expect the next #OnePlus to include a Type-C 3.1 with MHL Alternate Mode?

Aaron: I can’t comment on future products but why do you want MHL over displayport over type C.

pheymanss: What has been the hardest decision to justify to enthusiasts, and what has been the hardest to actually implement in your devices?

Carl: It’s not about justifying, but learning together. The good thing with our users is that they’ll always hold us accountable to our mistakes. An example is the whole debacle last year with NFC.

TehSViN: Have any of you guys tried out ubuntu touch on the one plus one?

Carl: Tried it, but TBH it’s not an operating logic I could get used to.

0912873465no: As someone who has been primarily an iOS guy, what is the biggest advantage for me if I switch to a OnePlus as opposed to a different Android product?

Carl: It’s best if you can try different products and just get the one you like the most as there’s no definite best smartphone. We all have different needs.

Wiz-1543: A software OS question. Will OnePlus support other mobile OS like Ubuntu or Windows 10 in the future?

Aaron: No plans officially but you’re welcome to port it. I have seen Ubuntu touch and sailfish running on devices unofficially.

OxygenOS, HydrogenOS and Their Unification

MikeyyL2304: Can you tell us a little bit more about what’s happening with Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS right now?

Brian: We combined platform, system and framework already. Application layer is separated. So, global users will still have the Oxygen experience and users in China will have Hydrogen experience. Just to add to this, we invite you all to check out the latest Community Build for the OP3 here: http://ift.tt/2cX1zz7 . The 3.5.x Community Builds feature the merged platform, and you can see that it’s still very much OxygenOS. We’re also implementing a huge amount of community feedback, and we’d love to know what you think as well.

kira94: By oxygen experience do you only mean the launcher or is the entire UI is going to be stock-ish as it is right now for the global users?

Brian: The entire UI will be stock-ish. We are just adding interesting and useful features on it.

harold_admin: Will the stock Android aesthetic of Oxygen OS change? Is OnePlus developing a UI skin of their own? If so, what would be the main advantages of this skin over stock?

Omega: We will always stick to create a pure Android experience while at the same time adding some features that we believe will be very valuable for our users. You are always welcome to share with us your feedback.

2denggood: How close to stock are you guys gonna keep the OxygenOS with the new staff?(hopefully it’s stays close) How soon can we expect Android N?

Brian: We will stay close to stock Android experience. But we will have more useful features than stock.

DaveT1482: If you are combining Hydrogen and Oxygen OS, will it be called H2OS and will there be themes to choose between the different styles?

Brian: No. Oxygen will keep its name and experience. We are not merging Hydrogen and Oxygen experience.

cyborg_2007: What is the hardest part about developing a custom OS from AOSP? What is the OnePlus design philosophy when it comes to software?

Brian: The hardest part is not about developing the custom OS, it’s improving whole experience.
This is a long story, but to make it short: We don’t aim to completely WOW you. But after you experience Oxygen OS, we want you to think “Yeah, this is actually better than stock Android.”

Omega: 1.The hardest part is how to build a stable and good performance platform, which we believe are fundamental and extremely important for our users. 2. Light, fast, stable, and closer to user need. That’s why we keep rolling out community builds.
And thank you for your support.

_transience: How do you plan on merging the Hydrogen and Oxygen? How will you satisfy “both worlds”?

Carl: Since the beginning, OxygenOS and HydrogenOS have had common code on framework and kernel levels, with the “merge”, we’re having them share more and more code on the Android and app levels too.
A good product is a good product no matter what part of the world you’re in, we don’t see it as two worlds. Some might have taken the community betas as an indication of future direction, whereas we’ve meant for it to be somewhere we can experiment and quickly react to user feedback. In fact, there’s a new version coming in the next few days with many said changes.
As for updates, if there’s any company feeling the pressure of needing to update fast, it’s OnePlus. We have the most vocal and tech savvy user base, so this point is not lost on us. I believe that now, with our new software team structure, we’ll be able to move a lot faster than before.

battler624: Are you ever moving back to CM (probably with OP4?) or are you going to stick with Oxygen/Hydrogen and what is going to happen to these 2? will they merge completely?

Carl: So many things go on under the hood of OxygenOS. People seem to like it, but have difficulties pinpointing exactly what. It’s important to control both the hardware and the software to deliver really good experiences, so we’re not looking to outsource software in the future.
An example is the auto brightness. We used to ship with an off the shelf implementation that felt bad and we had a lot of feedback on this too. So we took some of the devices with the best auto brightness implementations and started measuring how they performed in different scenarios. Turned out it was very different than just a simple trigger. The end result that we shipped with the previous OTA fades dark very slowly and goes bright very quickly. This is only one of many things we modified to deliver a better auto brightness implementation. User feedback was very positive. We’ve got countless stories like this.

Fullerphoto: Anything exciting you can share about future builds?

Omega: Yeah so we have improved the power consumption. And we are also looking into the scrolling screenshot feature. Do you think it will be pretty cool?

Android Nougat and Updates

MehediHassan: When do you guys plan on releasing it for the OP3?

Brian: We cannot share a timeline right now, but we are already actively working on it.
I want to clarify. The reason why we are unifying our teams, it’s because we want to provide faster updates to our users. Some users have already seen our improvements through beta programs and OP3 OTAs. It’s coming faster than before. This will carry over to the N update.

_kushagra: By the beta program you mean the community build right?

Brian: Yes. We have closed beta group and internal testing group as well. And everyone can join the open beta build(community build).

zingertek: When can we expect the changes in the 3.5 community build for the OP3 to be released as a regular OTA update?

Aaron: When it’s ready, we are moving rapidly in the direction of stable.

xdarkpandax: You guys plan to update the software on the OP2 further?

Aaron: Nuget for OP2 is coming, had a meeting about it today.

vvarma1: Can you confirm whether Oneplus received early access to the android N source code before it was made available to everyone through aosp?

Aaron: I can confirm that nougat is chewy.

joddlaren: How do you plan to get on track with updates in the future?

Carl: Definitely, we’ve made software for less than two years and it’s been a steep learning curve. To earn back trust we’re adopting a show, don’t tell strategy.

The_Otaku_Guy: Will the OnePlus 2 get the OnePlus gallery and oneplus music apps?

Aaron: Yup as part of Oxygen 3.5

catalinthejoker10: Do you have any eta on that ? or even a guess?

Aaron: You can try it today in the community build today. The community builds will be OTA’ed when we deem them stable.

EchoCorp: Is there a way to block calls from certain numbers right now? If not, are there any plans on implementing that feature?

Aaron: It will be part of Oxygen 3.5+

vinicius97g: Are you planning on releasing the tools necessary for Custom ROM devs to port features like Pocket Mode?

Aaron: http://ift.tt/2drSCxY and http://ift.tt/LEPE57 are all any rom developer should need be able to implment pocket mode there isnt much to it.

The_Otaku_Guy: Any plan on providing Community Build updates to the OnePlus 2?

Aaron: We run community builds as needed. I’m sure a certain dessert in the future will come as a community build first.

Epix_XD: When you release Nougat for oneplus 3, will you give additional features alongside the nougat features?

Aaron: Of course, we are shipping Oxygen not pure android. Oxygen has always been Android+ and will continue to be.

Nik3309: Why can’t you people provide proper updates at proper time like others phone companies?

Brian: That is what we have been trying to improve for last months. Unified platform, system and framework to speed up the update speed.

OnePlus 3 Bugs and Current Issues

onebus: Is there going to be a fix for the GPS issues on the OP3? Am on 3.2.6, it’s most stable for me when I switch to 2G. When on 3G/LTE…the blue dot on Google Maps is just constantly moving all over the place.

Aaron: First thing on me todo list for tomorrow.

Mossy375: I’m not really sold on the 6gb of ram at the moment, as I often get app ‘restarts’ when selecting an app I opened 8 or 9 apps back. Are there any plans to make more use of the 6gb?

Omega: We have fully utilized 6GB. In terms of restarting problem, we need to identify the root cause – could be because the apps you are using consume too much memories in the background. Would be helpful if you can provide some of your most frequently used apps.

robotkoer: Why is Europe OP3 shipping time 5 weeks? I thought you got it under control by delaying a month?

Carl: We thought we would get it under control by stopping sales for a month. Just imagine the shipping time now if we didn’t halt sales…
Although not the worst problem to have for OnePlus, we understand what unpleasant experience this could be for our potential customers.

OnePlus 3 Promises (Camera HAL)

gigatex: Carl Pei tweeted an improvement to the camera experience on custom roms was being looked in to. Any news about that yet?

Carl: Camera team is still looking into how to do this the best way, and weighing the consequences in user experience.

yooouuri: When do you release the camera/hal sources?

Carl: Full unprotected source code? Never.
Something that community ROMs can use? We’re discussing how to get it done.

OnePlus X and a Successor

chimnado: Will you ever release another 5″ phone?

Carl: Not looking that way. It’s too hard to fit a big enough battery into a 5″ device.

harold_admin: What does the future of OnePlus X software updates look like? Can we at least expect monthly security patches? Or even update till Oxygen OS 3.5 since that is based on Marshmallow?

Dash Charging

CameraRick: How good it might be for the battery to be loaded that fast with Dash Charging – I imagine the degradation is a lot faster than with ‘normal’ charging speeds. Any comment on life expectancy?

Carl: We love Dash Charge too. This is a technology that has been thoroughly tested in large quantities in real life scenarios, and we don’t foresee any problems. In fact, some may argue that it’s even safer due to the 5 levels of security checks in addition to not having to charge overnight.

crispaper: Do you have a power bank with Dash charge support in the works?

Carl: We were discussing this for the longest time, and we did a survey on our forums with a really positive response. However, we decided to shelve the idea as Dash Charge allows you to spend less time charging and we felt like carrying a power bank would be a bit counterintuitive to that.

aixnj: Laptop with dash charging?

Aaron: Dash charge all the things

Bradon: Less time in the socket, more time in the pocket.™

Screen Protectors, Accessories and Ecosystem

CameraRick: There were some cropping issues with the official curved tempered glas as you will know. Is this adressed by now? And when will they finally be in stock again?

Carl: In regards to tempered glass screen protectors, the cropping issues you mention are necessitated by the curved design on the front of the phone. Any other configuration would have left air bubbles, or poor durability that couldn’t pass our quality standards.

cdonald17: Why isn’t it possible to make the side bezels of the curved tempered glass thinner so no copping occurs? Or, why isn’t it possible to create a curved tempered glass screen protector that is entirely clear glass (i.e., no black and white versions)?

Carl: Don’t understand your first question. Second question is because it’s very hard to guarantee that the user applies it 100% correctly. It’s very likely for air bubbles to occur especially on the sides. Believe me when we’ve done a ton of experiments with every type of variation.

chronus_ess: I won’t call screen cropping, and thereby reducing usable surface area of the phone screen as having passed any decent quality control, but I’m just a user, not a QA personnel.

Carl: Agree, thinking of killing the product line entirely. There’s no perfect implementation on a curved surface with the technology we have available today.

TimonF: 1) In the EU Store why the cables for OP1 and OP2 nad their tempered glasses are not available to buy for at least 3 months now. 2) Why don’t you make available for the Shop the googles for VR experience or the bags and other cool stuff you have?

Carl: 1) Because those products are getting old and we don’t want to sit on inventory that we won’t be able to sell
2) Loop VR was never a permanent product, and the backpacks are coming Soon™

highdiver_2000: How is the OnePlus ecosystem coming along?

Carl: One step at a time. Over the past three years, we’ve shown that we can make good products and that we’re here to stay. Hopefully the trust we’ve established will help us reach our next step easier, namely scale which (despite what some believe) always comes before building an ecosystem.

Forums and Feedback Reception

aashish_amber: How often do you guys look at the comments made by users on one plus forum about different bugs they face , do you have someone to note down those feedbacks and problems?

Carl: We have a whole team dedicated to this, and quality is something we take very seriously.
We don’t only look at feedback on our forums, but also customer support, Reddit, other social media, email, etc. Every week, we have quality meetings where we go through the progress & priority of pending issues. If the issues are large enough, we’ll block software (and hardware) from shipping before they’re resolved.
Sometimes, it’s hard to reproduce the issues unless you’re in the same network conditions, so we actually have a globally scattered test team with people in all continents we cover. Once, we sent a test engineer to the home of one of our Swedish users to fully reproduce his issues.

Bradon: A lot of OnePlusers from several departments (marketing/product/customer service/platform/etc) spend a lot of time on our forums – myself included. Sometimes this is for feedback and bug report collection, and sometimes we’re just hanging out. Since the beginning, we’ve always tried to break down that barrier between OnePlus and OnePlus users. The way we see it, we’re tech enthusiasts, and we make the products that we ourselves want to use. You guys contribute tons of feedback and help to guide our brand and products. So, we’re all part of the same community. This AMA is a small part of that overall mindset.
To answer your question more directly, though, yes. We collect a ton of feedback and bug reports, as Carl already explained pretty thoroughly. We also have something bigger in the works to make bug reporting even better.

Customer Service

Mindstarx: Are there any plans to improve your customer service?

Carl: Looking at our metrics, CS has been improving steadily over the past 3 years, but of course nowhere near where we want to have it and there will always be cases that fall through the cracks.

Carrier Exclusivity and Issues

K-NineHD: Will the O2 UK phone still have 2 Sims? Will the device be locked to O2? Will there be any O2 bloat installed? Will you let any carriers install bloat to the phone? Do you have any plans for expansion into more countrys?

Carl: Yes, No, No, No, Always looking to expand in the right way [Author note: Responses in order]

Fettecheney: What is it like for you guys to try and work on compatibility with the different networks? (Verizon, T-mobile, etc) What makes it so difficult to get the phones to work with Sprint and Verizon’s 4G networks?

Carl: Each carrier is different. Some have no proprietary requirements while some have lots and even have you pay them to help make sure that your device adhere to their requirements. Usually, the larger the carrier the more requirements.

The OnePlus Team did a good job at answering questions in the AMA, and it provided the perfect opportunity to glean more new information regarding existing products and future plans.

We have a fresh batch of amazing homescreen to go through in a new XDA TV video. Taylor continues to pick through user-submitted homescreens to find some of the most amazing designs. This is a great series to check out if you’re looking for inspiration for your own homescreen setup. Also if you think your setup is already amazing, you can submit it for a chance to be featured in the next episode.

Check out the individual posts for the screens featured in this video, below.

A couple of months ago, Google announced they would be hosting the first annual Google Play Indie Games Festival. The idea was to highlight some indie mobile game developers that have produced a great entertainment experience for mobile. There wasn’t even a requirement that the game be available in the Play Store at the time of submission. Google just wanted to give some attention to game developers that deserved it and then reward them for their work.

At the end of last month, Google announced the 30 finalists who would go on to compete at an event held in San Francisco. At the time the finalists were first announced, only 10 of the games that were nominated were actually available in the Play Store. Now, 17 of the nominated games are currently available and more are confirmed to be released later in the year. So be sure to check out all of the nominees as each of them offer something unique to the mobile gaming experience.

The event in San Francisco was held on September 24th, and now Google has officially announced the winners of their first annual Google Play Indie Games Festival. Winners of the event were bit bit blocks, Numbo Jumbo, and Orbit. With finalist nominees also including Antihero (coming in 2016), Armajet (coming in 2016), Norman’s Night In: The Cave (coming in 2016) and Parallyzed.

All finalist nominees received a combination of prizes that include Google I/O 2017 tickets, a Tango Development kit, Google Cloud credits, an NVIDIA Android TV & K1 tablet, and a Razer Forge TV bundle. Google has said they are bringing the Indie Games Contest to European countries next and will soon announce which countries will be eligible for the event. So be sure to prepare your best game to be entered as it could be a great opportunity to introduce your work to a worldwide audience!

In my goal to discover as much about Android customization as I possibly could, I’ve made many obscure, yet interesting discoveries. I’ve shown you how to access hidden menus on your device by sifting through all of the hidden application activities on your phone. More recently, I’ve shown you how to access the hidden hardware diagnostic tool on certain smartphones. Now, I realize that some of you were disappointed in the fact that your smartphone was not covered in the previous article, and I apologize for that.

To make up for it, I’m going to walk you through something far, far more advanced and exciting: dumping your device’s bootloader to discover hidden fastboot commands. This guide, although done on my Nexus 6P, is most definitely replicable on the majority of smartphones. However, what commands you will have access to will vary significantly between devices. Most commands will not really help you in any real situation, but nevertheless it’s pretty interesting to dive this deep into your phone’s settings. Let’s get started.

Disclaimer: So long as you know what you’re doing and can follow instructions appropriately, nothing bad should happen to your device. But, we are still messing around with our device partitions and the bootloader, so there is no telling what could happen if you enter the wrong command. Make sure you have an off-device backup ready!

Preparation

Before we get started, there’s one really, really important thing to note. In order to extract your device’s bootloader, you will need root access on your phone. If you do not have root access, you can continue reading this guide for educational purposes, but you will not be able to perform any of the necessary commands. Got that? Good. Another prerequisite you will need to meet is ensuring that your computer has all of the proper ADB/fastboot drivers. If you don’t have the ADB/fastboot binaries, then I recommend installing Minimal ADB & Fastboot from our forums. As for the drivers, you can grab the necessary drivers for Google Nexus devices here and for all other devices from here. How do you know if you’re good to go? Plug in your device, enable USB Debugging under Developer Settings, open up a command prompt, and type:

adb devices

If you see your device’s serial number pop up, then you’ve got the right drivers.

Dumping the Bootloader

Our first step is to open a shell on our device so we can run commands over ADB. It’s best that we run commands over ADB because we’re much more prone to making mistakes when typing on a virtual keyboard, and making mistakes is not something you want to do here. The first command you should run in your command prompt is:

adb shell

If you see the command prompt change from displaying the ADB binary directory to showing the codename for your Android device, then you’ve successfully entered your device’s local command line shell. Now, in order to access the partitions we need to dump, you will need superuser access. To do so, type the following:

su

The symbol in front of your device’s codename should change from $ to # indicating that you can now run commands with elevated privileges. Be careful now!

Next, we will figure out the exact location of your device’s bootloader image. In order to find the exact directory, we will print out a list of all of the partitions and their directories by name, and look for one in particular called ‘aboot.’ You will need to enter two commands as follows:

cd /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name
ls -all

As you can see above, a giant list of partition directories are printed out. These partitions are sorted by name, so we can easily discern the location of our bootloader partition. In my case, the bootloader, which is ‘aboot’ in the above image, can be found at /dev/block/mmcblk0p10. This will vary depending on your device, so it’s important that you follow these instructions to figure out the true directory where your bootloader is located. Take note of this directory, however, as we will reference it in the following command to dump the bootloader:

dd if=/dev/block/{YOUR ABOOT PARTITION} of=/sdcard/aboot.img

Once successful, you should find a file called ‘aboot.img‘ located on the root of your internal storage. Now that we’ve dumped the bootloader, we need to examine it to determine what hidden commands we can find.

Hidden Fastboot Commands and their Uses

You might be familiar with some of the more common fastboot commands, such as fastboot flash or fastboot boot. There are many more fastboot commands as defined in the open source fastboot protocol. Here is a list of the fastboot commands available on every device with a bootloader based off of the latest AOSP code:

What’s missing in this list are fastboot oem commands. These commands are specific to Android device manufacturers, and there is no comprehensive list or documentation anywhere for what fastboot oem commands are available. Now, if your device manufacturer was kind enough to provide a fastboot command that lists all oem commands (try fastboot oem ? and see if that works), then you won’t need to do anything further. If there isn’t any command that prints a list of available fastboot oem commands, then you’ll need to print a list of strings from the aboot.img and search for the oem commands manually.

‘strings’ is a linux command, the documentation for which is available here. As you can tell, I’m personally using a Windows machine, so instead I’ve been using a program that mimics ‘strings’ from Linux. The raw output of the ‘strings’ command on an aboot.img file will be quite messy, but if you simply CTRL+F for ‘oem’ you should find what you need. If you want to refine your search, you can try this command (for the Windows version I linked):

strings * | findstr /i oem

For the Nexus 6P, I compiled the following list of fastboot oem commands:

Be warned that you should not attempt any of the above commands, or any of the commands that you discover on your device, unless you are willing to accept the risks. There is a reason these commands are hidden from the user.

That being said, I’ve thought of some neat uses for some of these fastboot commands I’ve found (that may or may not be present on your device, so follow the instructions above to check!) that should fancy the most hardcore Android enthusiast. There are two commands here that could have some practical use.

First up is the fastboot oem (enable|disable)-charger-screen command. What this does is disables the charging screen that pops up when your device is turned off. If you aren’t a fan of the blinding brightness of the charging screen when your phone is off, then you can disable it via this hidden fastboot command!

Next, there’s the fastboot oem off-mode-charge (enable|disable) command. This command determines whether or not your device will automatically turn on when a power source is detected. By default, it is set to ‘disable.’ I will admit that this command does not have much use for phones, but if you’re planning on mounting your tablet into your car’s dashboard, you will find this command incredibly useful. You will be able to set your device to immediately power on when the tablet receives power, such as when your car battery starts up. Conversely, it’s quite easy to power down the tablet when power is lost by using an automation app such as Tasker. This command, by the way, works exactly as written on the Nexus 7 (2013).

That’s it for this lesson in Android customizability. Share the commands that you discover (ideally in a pastebin link) in the comments below!

Thanks to XDA Senior Recognized Developer Dees_Troy for his assistance in the making of this article!